SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Sangamon County’s new mental health board is not moving quickly enough for everyone, including some people on the board. The board’s chairman, Steve Nardulli (pictured), said after the meeting people are just going to have to live with that.

“I understand that everybody wants to move through this quickly, but the mental health services community in Sangamon County is unbelievably complex,” Nardulli said. “We’re approaching 400 organizations and individuals who provide mental health services.”

The board formed after voters passed a one-half percent sales tax. It’s one of the steps the community is taking after the 2024 death of Sonya Massey, whom a sheriff’s deputy fatally shot after Massey spent years with mental health challengers. The killer, then-deputy Sean Grayson, recently died after being sentenced to twenty years in prison on a second-degree murder conviction.

Is the mental health board doing right by Massey? “We want to make sure that there is never again a Sonya Massey who had to go through that,” answered Nardulli. “She got to that point somehow. We need to understand the journey she went through before she got to the point of the confrontation with her murderer.”